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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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Assume that we have a world in which death notes are common. France's laws can't protect you. How will you deal with the threat?

The default assumption about meatspace states is that they control a physical space, have the only say what goes in there, control the inputs and outputs. And because to commit a meatspace crime you have to be in physical proximity to the victim - it means you are at least nominally under said state power. And this arrangement works well and is easy to understand. You kill a man in Reno just to watch him die and then you go to Folsom. To commit a crime you have to overcome the state.

What does the death note change - that you could kill a man in Reno from Uganda, but there is no way the crime can be traced to you (or prevented). You totally bypass the state. In that world dying by death note because you showed your face or told someone your real name - will be classified as death by natural causes - aka stupidity.

Hacking is inevitable feature of the internet. To be able to prevent and police crimes you have to be able to control all of the infrastructure. And this is where my argument comes into play - if the state is incapable by definition to secure the cyberspace - then it is up to the sysadmins - because they have total control over what goes in their networks.

Assume that we have a world in which death notes are common. France's laws can't protect you. How will you deal with the threat?

By changing my name in secret.

In any event, if I understand you correctly, your position is that it is utterly impossible to bring someone to justice for international hacking activity and therefore there's no point whatsoever in applying the criminal law to computer hacking. Is that it?

No. Cyber criminals have been brought to trial and convicted. I am saying that due to the way Internet was designed - crime prevention and defense burden is on the victim, because the state has no capacity to prevent the crime.

No. Cyber criminals have been brought to trial and convicted. I am saying that due to the way Internet was designed - crime prevention and defense burden is on the victim, because the state has no capacity to prevent the crime.

I don't understand this at all. If a cybercriminal is prosecuted and sent to prison, how does this not prevent crime, both by keeping the cybercriminal away from computers and by deterring those who are considering a cybercrime?